


.Dark Branches of Spring.

by Sanguis



Series: The Gods Below [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gods, Magic, Queer Characters, Witches, mixed race characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 04:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2455247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanguis/pseuds/Sanguis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the shadows of the Weeping Woods, Briar forges word after word, and gives them to her new friends. At the age of nine, they crown her Queen, with a circlet of thin branches and red flowers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	.Dark Branches of Spring.

"Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;”

\- John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

 

39 to 19 years before Bartram’s apotheosis

* * *

 

Briar's first steps begin in the Weeping Woods; whatever vague recollections she has of great stone walls and paths are but a strange dream she attributes to her mother. Elswyth spins tales of cities and their palaces, of smaller towns and villages - places filled with people. At the heart of the Weeping Woods, her daughter and she are the only humans.

They sit together by the pond; trees obscure three quarters of it, but the part closer to the edge of the forest spreads into a clearing where they can soak in the light of the sun. They eat the fish Elswyth catches, and later she teaches Briar the patience with which to string fish on a spear, how to make a bow and how to use it to fell rabbits and deer. From pelts and a little bit of magic, Elswyth makes clothes for them - soft and warm, practical but pretty nonetheless.

Under the shadows of the trees, Elswyth had built a cottage. She surrounds it with a circle of purple belladonnas, and an inner circle of marigolds. "Flowers like songs to grow to," she tells Briar.

When Elswyth works her magic, her fingers turn gold. There are flecks thereof in her hazel eyes as well, and when she stays in the sun for long, he dark skin becomes dotted with golden spots. Such spots only appear on Briar's cheeks, and sometimes her shoulders, but she shares the perpetually golden nails with her mother.

Briar dreams of becoming as dark and elegant as her mother but her skin is lighter; her mother calls it bronze. As she traces lines of black ink on their skins, Elswyth tells Briar of the golden people, those of great wisdom and strength, of which they were the last few descendants. And the people beyond the Weeping Woods had called them angels, messengers of the Lightmaker, the divine entity they say has created the world. 

"The Golden People always have dark skin," says Elswyth. "It's a mark of greatness, of power."

"And those who do not have dark skin?" Briar asks. "Can they be golden?"

"When they are our children, and learn our songs." Elswyth says softly. "When they carry gold in their fingers, and know the right words."

Though she never does tell Briar how they’ve come to live in the Weeping Woods, alone and without the family she sometimes tells Briar they once had, Briar hears the hint of loathing when Elswyth speaks of “them” of the “royals” who rule the lands they walk upon.  _They don’t rule these woods_ , Briar thinks vehemently,  _we are the Queens here._

Elswyth frees her mane of tiny dark curls from their braids every once a month, washes them with herbs and flowers, and then braids her hair again while she sings - precisely twenty-seven braids each time. She lets Brair’s curls grow first and then does the same, except she only makes thirteen braids.

To bathe, they go deeper into the forest, to a stream that glides from the mountains encircling the vast forest. It’s not a long walk. The forest is too large for them to know it all; it stretches for unending miles across the land. Briar almost imagines it to be infinite, but when she climbs to the tops of trees, she can see the contours of the mountains in the distance. It never occurs to her to look for something beyond those monoliths to the south, not when there’s so much within.

A week after Briar’s seventh birthday, Elswyth’s hands begin to tremble. Briar has to help her mother with the braids, with making their clothes, with cooking - it continues until within a month, Elswyth cannot walk on her own, until one morning her eyes don’t open and, as the weeks pass, the forest devours her.

Briar cries for three days and three night, and on the dawn of the fourth she has spilled all the water she had contained in her small body. Her mother had always said that it’s best to spend the first wave of grief, because to keep it hidden would make it grow ugly.

She sings a song for her mother, then cleanses her body in the pond. Then she hunts alone for the first time - only one rabbit, because she is the only one who needs to eat. She sings to the flowers they had planted and cared for all these years, because she cannot bear the thought of letting them wilt.

Eventually she sings and hums almost continuously, because the silence is too much - the Woods are not silent no, they’re full of creatures, and rustling leaves, of thundering skies, and splashing rains. But her voice is the only human one she can hear, and it begins to take on the sound of despair.

Early one morning, when her body has not allowed her a night's rest, Briar decides she will speak to her mother. She picks some of the wide orchids dangling low, some belladonna that grow in her garden, cuts her finger and smears the flowers with her blood. She circles them around the carefully laid pile of her mother's elegant bones.

"Golden blood," she says with a trembling voice. "I call to you. I will speak with my mother."

She repeats it until her voice steadies, until it becomes a mantra, and until the gold creeps from her nails to her knuckles, until the wetness falling from her eyes is golden too.

Then her mother does appear, as regal and mighty as Briar remembers her. 

"I will not tell you what you did is wrong," says Elswyth. "For you have transgressed, but it has made you terrible - a terrible beauty."

And in that moment, Briar sees that there's so much more she can do with her songs and some blood; she can sing of death and call it to her, she can see the life within each tree and creature around her, and she can give more or  _ take it _ for her own use. The dead she speaks with are but spectres; she cannot make them stay as long as she pleases, though some do. They seem to find her intriguing, though she cannot understand a word they say.

In the shadows of the Weeping Woods, Briar forges word after word, and gives them to her new friends. At the age of nine, they crown her Queen, with a circlet of thin branches and red flowers.

Her body begins its transformation in her eleventh year; Briar wakes with blood between her legs, staining the sheets of her bed. It’s not a wholly surprising development; she has seen her mother bleed before, and Elswyth did explain it - though she seems to have forgotten to mention the  _pain_ , that wretched thing that gnaws and bites and  _tears_  at her body for a day or two. Briar has to adjust this new aspect of herself to fit into her daily life.

Her breast then take firmer shape, and it’s cumbersome when she has to run. They are not big enough to be a problem, but her body begins to feel different - still agile but somehow heavier. Her body is making her ready to be a woman.

"You have some years still," says Elswyth. The other specters whisper: [ _Yessif oi’Urtae, Roie viye Kizj Paerlum oie Murte._](http://-/)

When she is fourteen, Briar steps beyond the confines of the Weeping Woods, and comes to a field of white poppies. The absence of trees jars her, makes her stand still as she tries to understand the landscape stretching before her.

 _The flowers will be red_ , her specters tell her.  _He will make them bleed._  For a moment she can see a boy - tall and pale, he stalks through the field with outstretched arms. She cannot see his face quite yet, not until he turns his head just so that she can see his profile. She smiles. As she crosses the field, she happens upon a group of people who look like hunters.

“Nobody has ever gone into those woods,” one says. “That’s where witches live - they eat human flesh.”

"Don’t be stupid," says another. "There ain’t no witches."

Briar creeps closer, though their stench makes her apprehensive. They don’t see her until she is almost within their little camp, and then they point their weapons at her as if that should scare her. They’re dressed in some rags, but also some leather to cover the important places. Their hairs are all matted, but some are short and others long. They have the eyes of people who’ve gone hungry too long, or that are hungry for things they shouldn’t be.

"Just a lil’ gal." Says a third voice, female.

"You a witch?" The first asks.

Briar inclines her head. “Do you want me to be a witch?” She has an accent now, with years of not having spoken the tongue her mother had taught her.

"Will you eat us?" asks a fourth. He’s hit with the end of someone’s stick, yowls like a hurt animal. He certainly looks like one.

"A pretty girl, tho’," says the second. He reaches for her cheek, but she swats his hand away. In response, he bares his teeth at her, but when he swings at her, she dodges.

"I’ll be a witch, then," Briar says. "And I’ll have fun tearing you apart."

They hit her just once with their stick of metal - there’s also a loud bang, and Briar is hit in the stomach. She rips them apart with her knife, her nails, her power. A the end, she tastes iron on her lips, and she stumbles towards the pond, lets the blood drip red into the water. On her knees, Brair spits a curse and watches it grow. From simple blood and water comes a child, and he screams as if the very air does him offence.

His hair will turn yellow, but his eyes will remain brown. His skin will tan to a light umber, but for now it’s almost translucently pale.

"He’ll grow quickly, for a babe," says Elswyth as she gingerly touches his wet hair.

Brair smiles. “He should.”

She names him Niran, and takes him with her to the cottage. His nails are only gold when she sings to him, or when he laughs. He learns to walk within two months, and in another two weeks he speaks in simple sentences. She carries him everywhere, except when she has to hunt; then she tells her specters to stay with him until she returns. he drinks the milk from her breast for three months before she can give him anything else.

Niran can only see Elswyth’s spectre, and Briar sometimes catches her mother whispering things to her little boy. Then she disappears for three days and returns with an instrument, a violin, which she gifts Niran without prompt. By then he has grown to reach Briar’s middle.

He plays the violin softly at first, carefully, but as the end of the first year after his birth creeps near, the melody grows, dances, enchants; Briar has never felt such pride. When Niran opens his eyes, they glow golden before returning to brown.

"I am ready to grant their wishes," he says, smiling sweetly. He swings his small feet to and fro. "They want so many things, have so many dreams - I’m ready to take them."

Briar's domain is breached. Niran seems to be enough to distract some, but others dare to go deeper, further, until they find her and her mother’s garden. The women are curious, they want to talk. Some of it feels belittling - “What is such a young girl doing all alone in these parts.”, as if she is powerless, defenceless. Some show more respect and ask other questions, about her flowers, about her skills as a huntress, about the dead she can speak to.

The men are also curious, but in a different way. Some want knowledge, others want  _more_ , and that is something Briar is unwilling to give. She refuses, and tears them apart if she has to. She hangs their bones as warning. Those that are gentle she takes to her bed. Some women want it too, and they are kinder about it, as well as cunning. They come with terms Briar can accept, so she learns from them. Few return, and those that do stop after a third time.

Briar doesn’t leave the Weeping Woods again, but she gains a reputation nonetheless -  _Wildling_ ,  _Witch, Death-speaker._  She laughs and takes those names as her own, wears them like the silk dresses her mother used to make under the full moon. People become afraid of her and the forest, of Niran and his tunes. And yet, they return - for wishes, for dreams, for a hint of the forbidden. She has little interest in entertaining them.

Then there’s that dreadful morning after her eighteenth birthday when the spectres whisper frantically, and the world seems wrong. The wind feels strange on her skin, the earth beneath her feet unfamiliar. As she bathes in the stream with Niran, she listens to her frightened specters:  _[e Roie, e Roie, e Roie – e Roie lovn oie eniye krae pruvem](http://-/)._  She tells Niran to return to his pond, to be careful, and mindful of strangers.

She only sees what they mean as she returns to her cottage after felling a deer. Men charge at her on their horses, with their swords, but she has a spear and kills three of them.

Years later she would have nightmares of these eight men, of how the shortest strikes her with a long staff made of silver. It hurts more than anything else they use against her, and she cannot easily cut it with her spear. At one end it has a a sun made of gold, and when its owner beats her down with it, he chants strange words that make her quiver. She’s seen that sun-symbol before, some of the townspeople had worn clothes with it embroidered on them. They’d spoken reverently of a Lightmaker, but their God means nothing to her. This man however, he knows things of power, and she despises him for it.

"We should kill her," says the little grey man. He holds his staff as if it will defend him. "She is a heretic and a whore, like all of her people." Briar spits at him; she expects some sort of retaliation, but he does nothing.

"Sire," says another, taller, man. "She has the nails of gold. If we kill her, we kill the last of her line - should we keep her, we could claim the estates of her people, and secure support from the people. Your line will have the Golden blood!"

The man with the circlet looks directly at her face, then to the men that had spoken. To her great dismay, he waves his hand and tells them to bind her hands, to take her with them to the city. She screams and curses them with every word she can think of, until at last she’s too exhausted to even hold her head up.

It takes weeks to reach the thing they call a city, and in those weeks Briar refuses to utter a word. The gates open like the jaws of a great and horrible creature, so she turns her face away and closes her eyes. She struggles and kicks, though in the end she has to watch those gates close behind her, firmly placed between her and the sprawling landscape. With every door that shuts her way, every step she is further from the Woods, she feels her power wane, fade into the core of her existence.

The process is repeated so many times that Briar loses count, but then they leave her in the charge of others and she doesn't see them for a week. She misses her little boy, misses his music and his laughter. She misses the garden she had cared for, and she misses the peace in her forest. Her spectres are hidden somewhere inside of her, too frightened to face this new world she finds herself in, so all she has is her name and her spirit.

Briar never sees those "estates" the men had spoken of, though many people around her seem to think it important somehow; she hears them whisper of it when they think she's not looking – Briar never looks, she seeks the windows that point southwards, and she wonders if her bare fingers could break the stones that keep her in the walls. But her fingers seem small, fragile, and (to her greatest horror) clean. Her bones feel brittle.

Elswyth’s tales come to mind, and while the buildings are certainly impressive, the people are underwhelming. They all huddle in that one building once every week to sing songs of wanting to be saved. It makes Briar’s skin crawl. They like to pretend they’ve saved her, especially their ruler – a  _king_ , they call him. And what is a woman to be called, what is her position?

"We'll make you into a Queen yet," the Ladies with their pins and their needles tell her as they judge her naked body. 

_ I already am a Queen _ , she thinks,  _ and you will never take that from me. _

They put her in dresses with bodices that barely allow her to breathe, and she feels her freedom fade from her grasp. Despite the agility and stamina she had built up in her years in the Weeping Woods, she cannot run or sing. "Running is not for Ladies." says the crone they send to "teach her courtly manners". Singing, apparently is a perfectly Lady-like pastime to engage in, though her songs become forbidden things - too dark, too bloody, too grim.

The younger ladies show her she needs to sing sweeter things, of sunshine, butterflies, growing flowers and honey. She'd rather they all wilt, but she sings of the flowers in her mother's old garden, of the poppy field that will become red. She never does tell them it's the red of blood, but she dreams that that pale boy she had seen slays them all and paints the white poppies with their wretched blood.

"You need to please the King," one young girl named Anita tells her. "Isn't it an honour – you'll be sitting near the prince!"

"I'm not here for the pleasure of men," she mutters. The old crone hears her, but when Briar expects a reprimand, all she sees is a small smile.

"That's a charming sentiment," a crone of a woman whispers to her. "But the way to their unruly heads is sadly through their pleasure." Anita's remark seems less naive then, and more a calculated observation hidden between smiles and giggles. A chance to sit with the prince and entice him – an honour indeed.

And Briar may despise what these people make of her and those of her gender, but she admits that the old Lady is correct. So she learns to be coquettish, coy, she learns to please. She'll be demure so long as it serves. Her teeth will gnash, and her blood will boil, but Briar will survive, and  _ thrive _ .

"I will be your Queen," she says to the princeling on the celebration of her twenty-third year. "I will be your wife." His eyes narrow, but Briar knows she has him - she has but to smile to see the way his pupils widen, to note the hitch in his breath. These men-children are so weak, so easily manipulated...

_ Her _ son - and she  _ will _ give this rotten country a male heir, but her son will be stronger; she'll be certain to make him powerful, beautiful, and most importantly,  _ terrible _ . He'll be broiled in the dark shroud of her heart, and he will be the light of her life. This creature she has now agreed to tie her remaining youth to, he is inconsequential – a necessary tool. She need only lay with him once, give him but a taste of her flesh, and then she can banish him from her presence.

She keeps her voice steady at the altar of her doom a year later, bows her head and promises to become wife and Princess. In her heart, she vows the destruction of her husband and his people.

The King takes her to a landscape filled with ruins; there are no people here, only their carcasses and bones, left behind in a brutal war. _And they call me the barbaric witch-princess_. Her people are here, her golden blood, and the throne of her mother. This is a place that haunts her dreams, a place her spectres whisper to her about when she gazes from windows.

The King, now her Father-by-marriage, drags her by the arm, to a hall, and it strikes Briar how much splendour has lost to the dust and the two decades since a Queen had sung here. He throws her against the dais, and Briar climbs upwards, though she cannot free herself from him – not yet. Her husband hides behind his father, and for all that Leander rises tall like a tower, he is but a weak shadow of an empire Briar intends to crush.

"Sit on this throne and swear that this Golden land is mine," says the King. Briar looks at him now, straight to those terrible blue eyes, and curses his line with only dead-borne.

"Swear it, you miserable harlot! I did not slaughter your people to have your silent tongue; your mother may have run, but you are a caged bird."

 _I am_. And she is more. She grows; there are many ghosts here; they seek revenge in their only heir.

"SWEAR IT!"

Four children run from behind the throne, startled. The darkest skinned runs ahead, and the three behind him are paler than each one before, until the last is so blond and pale, Briar would barely know he is of Gold. Briar's heart pounds and pounds, her poor heart. She sees them run, but a wall of silver soldiers stands between them and the open air, their deliverance.

"[Nuzjat](Don't)." She says. "Do not kill them. Do not – [fir gaetu](please), don't…"

The children don't scream, but Briar does.  In her mind, their golden blood spreads until it threatens to drown her.

"The land is yours," she murmurs. "It is yours."

The ghosts are furious with her. She is the last of their divine line, the last of The Light-maker's Golden People, and she sinks further into the twilight, the shadow.

 _You will fear me yet, old man._ He will fear her in his death-bed, fear the beast that grows inside her. He will fear for his line when all born are dead children, and she is the only salvation.

She will bear a Prince; this land of silver rivers will crumble beneath his song, and Briar will rise from the ashes and roots more than a Queen. _This I vow_.

Briar knows she's with child when she feels her bones becoming stronger, when she feel how the night creeps up on the day, and she can taste blood on her lips. Laughter returns to her the more she feels her child grow, the more aware she is of the power he will wield.

In the meantime, she needs someone who will stand by her son’s side, swear fealty to him - sacrifice themselves for her son. She mulls over this puzzle in the solarium she makes hers and hers alone after some lady insults her. Frightened pages bring her tea and meals, all of them unworthy.

The solution comes in the shape of a boy-child no older than three years. He bounces into her solarium; a page bringing her a plate of food is at his heels. His hair is the blackest ebon, and his eyes are the lightest grey. Unlike the pages and handmaidens, he seems enthusiastic in her presence.

He continues to look at her, awed, long moments after the page has left. She returns his look, intrigued.  _ He’ll do, _ she decides. She tells him that too.

“Come sit here, my little chevalier,” she says, “I have a task for you.”

His name is Noam, she learns. Wrapping this boy-child in her love and around her finger is an easy enough task, and he’s such a cute little thing. He promises to be her son’s friend.

When Bartram is born, quiet, pale, covered in her blood, she holds him in her arms and  _ loves _ him, her sweet child of grief and thundering rain. He is as beautiful as she had seen that day in the field, small and lovely. She kisses his face and his tiny fingers, his belly and his feet. She never lets her husband touch him, though he seems too disappointed to care.

In her baby's eyes, she sees the power she had once lost; it has become greater, concentrated, but wild. "Exquisite boy of mine," She tells him. "We will be Gods."


End file.
